Bought the new Call of Duty WWII game because FPS games are my favorite genre, right above RPG’s and Racing games and I wanted something I could turn off my brain and just soak into for a while.
However, I also bought Need for Speed: Payback at the same time because it was on sale and I was honestly more excited for it, after the wonderful time I had with the previous title in the franchise.

I’m pretty glad it was only $20, 'cause damn it’s got issues. While the driving mechanics are largely the same, every other change enacted has been for the worse.
The new “speed card” system, which is just another EA pay-to-play loot crate system works exactly like how you think it does. Unless you’re shelling out IRL money, you’ll be rerolling your upgrades to get better parts.

My “favorite” part is there’s now 5 classes of cars: Drift, Drag, Race, Off-Road and Runners (Destruction based). But let’s say you’ve got an entirely souped up drift car, easily capable of completing some races. Nope, not a race car, buy a new one of that class.
But what about my old speed cards, can I save them so I don’t have to start a car over from level 1 every time? Wrong again, they’re car specific not class specific, so grind those loot crates you bitch.

Lastly, the sheer number of available cars has dropped off significantly. You want a drag car that ISN’T a mustang? Hahaha, no. How about any tuner import that isn’t a Honda? Lalala, Toyota and Nissan don’t exist, we can’t hear you. Mitsubishi only makes Evo’s, right?

All these I believe have been bundled into DLC’s and such, but really, who cares.
There’s a story and stuff happens, but this is a hard pass all around

Sounds like they took all the money they saved from not having to license those brands and put it right into creating something to screw you over.

I just finished Gone Home - a “adventure exploration game” (according to their wikipedia). I got it for free as a monthly game with my PS4+ subscription but never actually got around to playing it.

I’m pretty glad that I didn’t buy it though (it retails for about $12 on Steam) because I thought it was a pretty pointless exercise. The whole game is just wandering around a house, picking up notes and reading them. I didn’t find the storyline particularly engaging and there wasn’t any king of big reveal at the end or twist or anything as a pay off. I mean, I get that the intention wasn’t to make a big dramatic game but for me the storyline was just too simplistic to be interesting.

It only took an hour or so to finish and at the end of it I was just like - huh, is that it? I definitely would have been royally pissed if I’d forked out $12 for it, that’s for sure. Unless you get it for free as part of a bundle or something, I wouldn’t recommend wasting your money on this indie title.

Tried it back when it was in open beta - felt like someone tried to take a traditional MMO, and tried to make people think it was like Skyrim. Crafting UI was a mess as well. Maybe it’s changed since then, but the fact they thought they could pull that off was too ridiculous to trust in their vision.

Also, to be honest, it’s really tough to play a different MMO after playing WoW - because even if it’s not fair, it’s difficult to not judge it based on an MMO that’s seen 13 years of content and polish.

I just finished the storymode of Destiny 2 - it took me about 20 hours but that included doing a few side quests and multi-player death matches. I think if you solely did the story missions then the game would probably only be about 8-10 hours long. It’s not a bad game but fuck it’s two dimensional. I mean, even against the final boss I never felt challenged. I didn’t hate it but I certainly don’t feel any need to play any of the end game stuff and I’m not going to buy the expansion that’s out for it at the moment. I’ve got no idea why it’s such a popular game because the gameplay is super repetitive and the competetive multiplayer is pretty bland.

Well, the games certainly look good but you’re definitely right about the whole loot thing. I mean, there’s shops and stuff in Destiny where you can buy armour/weapons and there’s a whole mod system as well for your items but there’s no point in doing any of it because every mission that you do scores you five or six weapons and usually the same amount of various armour items. There’s really no point in ever even looking at what an item does - you just equip the highest stats item and then replace it five minutes later when you get a better one.

The weapons are super generic as well - there’s like pistol, rifle, semi-automatic rifle, submachine gun and sniper rifle. The semi-automatic handles exactly the same as the sub machine gun though and all rifles have a scope so they’re just slightly less zoomed sniper rifles - so there’s really actually only three guns in the whole game. Sure, there’s maybe three or four different elemental effects guns can have but there’s no point ever looking at what they do because it’s so easy to kill things.

You know how some games make a real point of forcing you to use the right weapons for the right enemies - ie. energy weapons for shields, armour piercing for machines, fire effects for flesh etc. Yeah, Destiny doesn’t do any of that. Or at least, if it does then it’s in such a marginal way that it doesn’t matter. When you’re pummeling something with a machine gun there’s not really any point switching from fire to energy just to kill it two seconds faster.

I’d say that if you can pick up a copy of Destiny 1 or 2 (I could discern no real difference between the two so either would do) for $30 bucks then you’ll probably be happy enough with your gaming experience. Any more than that and it’s a huge rip off imo.

I reluctantly bought Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus today - let’s just say that it earns the mixed reaction that Steam reviewers have given it.

Considering what MachineGames tried to do - the result was a lot better than it could’ve been. There’s a reason why the best sequels aren’t a direct continuation of the same story. Sequels like that, to great games, tend to suffer from what I call “Matrix Syndrome” - where the first work is so unique, so impressive, and wraps everything up so nicely, that trying to pick up from where you left off just results in a work that’s pretty underwhelming in comparison.

That said, TNC puts in a lot of effort to avoid it - you can tell they tried really hard, through good writing, brilliant characters and scenery, and some interesting twists. But no matter how hard they tried, they weren’t going to make “What if the Nazis Won?” fresh again. In fact, some of the stuff they tried, is just sinnable in general - like the large number of cutscenes and quasi-cutscenes, BJ’s angst and daddy issues, and the impression that a lot of the plot was wrapped around tying together thematic levels, as if someone was trying to write a plot around a collection of multiplayer type maps.

But, without these things, surprisingly, the game would’ve probably been even worse. Because even if these are generally developer sins, they were done so well that it makes one reluctant to call them out on it. Sure, of every character created, the guy who exists to create dead Nazis, is the last one that needs an origin story to explain his motivations. But I’ll be damned if Rip wasn’t so horrifically realistic, when it comes to both racists and abusive parents. I’m opposed to cutscenes in general, but I’d be lying if I said they weren’t entertaining to watch.

So, yeah - overall it’s decent. Just don’t go into it expecting the kind of experience you got with The New Order. Seeing Nazi altered landmarks in a different country, and jackboots on different streets, doesn’t make it new, but it’s still a worthy continuation of the story that’s done well. That said, I could do without the “We’re Not Gonna Take” it cover on the credits. It might not be quite as cliche’ (or expensive) as getting the rights to the original, but the outright screaming of the lyrics doesn’t make it sound more aggressive, it just makes me more aggressive in my desire to punch the guy doing the screaming.

Also, I had to laugh at the fact they saved themselves the effort of making more than one set of credit art - with all the swastikas being replaced with the same triangle-type symbol that the German version uses

EDIT: Having had some more time to play this, I’ll talk about it a bit more.

So gameplay-wise it’s a lot like your typical SMT game. There are no dungeons but combat uses the press-turn system so it’s pretty fun. A nice thing about it that I really wish the main series would keep on is that when you target an enemy there’s a little weakness chart that tracks what types of attacks you’ve used and how effective they were. No need to analyze shit or anything, it’s always there and it owns.

There are F2P mobile game elements, a gacha that nets you absurd shit if you’re lucky like Lucifer or Mara. I have not been lucky enough to get my favorite green dick riding a golden chariot as of yet. Gems to roll the gacha are pretty sparse so far. But I haven’t run into any content that really necessitate it either. If you purchase shit from the cash shop you DO get a bonus rate up for the gacha for a few hours but from what I’ve read, it doesn’t seem to matter a whole lot. Skills are also randomized, so even if you roll the same dude they might have entirely different skill sets.

There is demon talking, you can’t do it at will, however. When the battle starts the game just randomly decides whether or not a demon wants to talk and you do it. Demon fusion is also in the game, so you can get some decent demons just by fusing garbage you find. I haven’t really gotten a hang of how skill inheritance works, if any. Mostly because I don’t speak Japanese very well so any translation I’ve been doing for myself is very slow and very bad.

There’s also a reincarnation system where once your demon hits max level you can sacrifice demons of the same rarity to make it go up in rarity. So, for example, if your 1* pixie is at max level you can sacrifice a 1* Jack Frost and turn your pixie into a 2* pixie. I think it goes all the way up to 6* based on what the NPC said?

There is a story, but again I have no fucking clue what’s going on. Occasionally you get dialogue choices that appear to affect your alignment. Top answers always seem to be Law, bottom are Chaos. I try to stay neutral because neutral 4 lyf.

There are a ton of skills and passives in the game as well and they’ve already planned to release it in other regions beyond Japan and likely want to release a Global version so, unless you can read a reasonable amount of Japanese or are very familiar with the SMT series I guess I’d recommend waiting for the global version if it happens just because not knowing what skills and passives you have is a real pain in the ass. I’m so glad SMT uses such distinct spell naming systems. I’ll probably jump ship to the global version if it ever releases because I didn’t roll a Mara or Lucifer on my first gacha roll.

So I’m playing Evil Within 2 and some of the game design choices really bug me.

Firstly, enemies have a habit of teleporting for significant moments - ie. you flick a switch or something and suddenly the room that you were in previously has three or four enemies in it. The designers haven’t even bothered to try and explain how they got into the room, they just appear there for you to fight. It’s a small thing, but it always bugs me when it happens. Like are they hiding behind furniture or something?

Enemies often pretend to be asleep or dead or something next to an item or hidden in a bush near an item so when you go and pick it up they can give you a jump scare. Problem is though, if you notice them half the time you can stand there smashing bottles into their face and they don’t react until you touch the item - which is obviously the AI trigger - but other times they do react when disturbed. I’m more inclined to think that this is just shonky programming rather than a conscious design choice too.

Enemies are meant to react to sight and sound but you can smash up wooden crates with an axe and fire a gun like ten metres away from them and they don’t react. When chasing you, the enemies lose sight of you REALLY easily and sound doesn’t seem to even factor into it then. Like you can be running, making heaps of noise and they still lose you as long as you stop and stand in a bush.

Thirdly, enemies never look up. You can literally just climb up onto a bus and peg bottles at the enemies and the enemies can’t work out where you are.

Other enemies, however, cheat when it comes to their awareness of you. There’s one particular enemy who is an absolute bitch to fight because they’re really fast and strong so ideally you’d want to do a stealth kill on them. Buuuuuuuuuut you can stand outside of their sight range (you know this because if they could see you they’d attack because they’re super aggressive) and walk around them in a semi circle and the enemy always angles it’s body towards you so that you can’t sneak up on it and do a stealth kill. That’s just silly and cheap. If it knows I’m there, then it knows I’m there. You can’t have it not know I’m there but still react to me to make the combat harder.

Lastly, if you go into somewhere that you’re not meant to be in yet, the game will just lock a key door so you can’t progress. The thing is though, when you get there later (when you’re meant to) then the door is unlocked and there’s no explanation why. It’s shonky as fuck game design that’s basically got gnomes running around locking and unlocking doors to make sure you don’t get into areas you’re not meant to yet. The odds thing is that the game makes you use keycards to access doors in certain areas so it wouldn’t exactly be difficult to just have that as a standard thing as an explantation for why you can’t get through doors too early in the game.

It’s actually not too much of a bad game and I am actually quite enjoying it - but there’s so much sloppy game design that I’m constantly finding myself rolling my eyes at the game, which then takes me out of the atmosphere, which is a really downer when it’s a survival horror completely operating on atmosphere. Shitty and/or convenient enemy AI is pretty inexcusable though for games these days.

The game play is a bit repetitive so far and the storyline isn’t engaging me (extremely tired ultra combat dad looking for daughter game trope) so I doubt I’ll finish it. I’ll no doubt get 30 hours of gameplay out of it and that’s really all I ever look for in a game.

Replaying-ish the remastered version of the original Bioshock - while doing the achievement thing.

Of course, it’s just as great a game as I remember, though - I can’t help but be reminded of a much more recent game at some parts, which kinda dilutes the impact somewhat. Namely, Portal 2. Obviously there are many more differences than similarities, but still - it’s kinda a nagging, back of the mind kinda thing.

The trigger was Fontaine/Atlas’s face heel turn, complete with hammy evil laugh, and the change of the sign from “Ryan Industries” to “Fontaine Futuristics” - which fairly closely mirrors Wheatley’s face heel turn, after he helped you defeat who you thought was the big bad, and his subsequent “Wheatley Laboratories” logo during the loading screen.

Now obviously one is a puzzle game with a truckload of humor, while the other is basically a traditional first-person shooter, with horror elements and an illustration of a flawed economic/political system. And of course, Wheatley was created to be a moron, while Fontaine was a brilliant troll - who’s face/heel turn without taking care of Tanenbaum first, was probably the first stupid thing he’s ever done. Also, obviously, Ryan doesn’t help you get revenge on Fontaine, after you defeat him - unlike GlaDOS does.

But Fontaine’s mockery, followed by guilt trips in the second half, does mirror Wheatley doing the same thing during his test chambers, up until you face him. And while Tanenbaum isn’t Ryan - it could be said that Caroline - the aspect of GlaDOS that ultimately helps you, and sets you free, isn’t the GlaDOS the player defeats at the end of the first act (and the first game).

Yeah, I know - it’s a bit of a reach, but there’s just enough for the reminder to present itself.

I’ve recently picked up Warframe again after not playing it for two years and I’m thoroughly enjoying myself.

The Plains of Eidolon are absolutely amazing and keep the gameplay interesting for longer than before. I love to farm and grind so the fishing and mining is perfect for me.
Also the Void Relic system is definitely an upgrade in my opinion.
And the mobility. I just love how smooth the game feels running around as Volt.

Maybe I’m biased though. When I first started out I got bored of it because my friends stopped playing and I was too new to the game to have the hang of it yet so I dropped it as well. Now I got myself a small group of good friends who guided me through most of the stuff and I got enough knowledge to still enjoy it on my own.